May 19, 2011

Nicholls and Ryder: Semitic 4.4-5.1 thousand years before present

The same authors dated Proto-Indo-European at 8.4ky, in agreement with the work of Gray and Atkinson. In the current paper they re-analyze the data of Kitchen et al. (2009) for Semitic languages, and their estimate is somewhat younger than 5,750 years of that paper. All in all, it's good to see different researchers using different techniques but coming up with similar solutions.

It is increasingly clear that while the Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in the Neolithic Near East, the Proto-Semites followed them by about three thousand years. In the latter case there is also a Y-chromosome marker (J-P58) with an apparent age in impeccable agreement with the linguistic evidence, now that the genealogical-"evolutionary" mutation wars seem to have been won.

This also brings into focus the weakness of the argument that Anthony (2007) (p. 76) brings to the table by hypothesizing that the first farmers of northern Syria were Afro-Asiatic speakers like the Semites of the Near Eastern lowlands. Semites come into the picture 5,000 years after the onset of the Neolithic, and 3,000 years after the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Their relationship with Afroasiatic speakers of Africa make it quite likely that they lived in the south, probably in Arabia, and certainly not in eastern Anatolia or northern Syria.

Indeed, the recent discovery that haplogroup J1*(xP58) is associated with Northeast Caucasian languages, together with the absence or paucity of J1 in most African Afroasiatic speakers suggests to me that the J-P58 Proto-Semites may be the result of the transfer of an African language on a basically West Asian population. Such a scenario might also explain some of the -incorrectly quantified, but nonetheless existent- African genetic components in both Jews and Arabs, as well as the pastoralist/dry-climate J1 associations.

Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop on Statistical Modelling.

Abstract: Kitchen et al. (2009) analyze a data set of lexical trait data for twenty ﬁve Semitic languages, including ancient languages Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian, modern South Arabian and Arabic languages and ﬁfteen ethiosemitic languages. They estimate a phylogenetic tree for the diversiﬁcation of lexical traits using tree and trait models and methods set up for genetic sequence data. We reanalyze the data in a homplasy-free model for lexical trait data. We use a prior on phylogenies which is non-informative with respect to some of the key scientiﬁc hypotheses (concerning topology and root time). Our results are in broad agreement with those of Kitchen et al. (2009), though our 95% HPD for the root of the Semitic tree (the branching of Akkadian) is [4400, 5100]BP and we place Moroccan and Ogaden Arabic in the Modern South Arabian Group.

32 comments:

It is increasingly clear that while the Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in the Neolithic Near East, the Proto-Semites followed them by about three thousand years.

Amazing! One of the key arguments for PIE being born in Anatolia is that it borrowed words from Semitic. It is completely impossible for PIE to be 3,000 years older than a language from which it borrowed the word for bull.

The idea of PIE spreading with the Neolithic is very much a minority view among linguists. Naturally this won't stop you from continuing to believe in it. But for the benefit of your readers, I feel bound to point this out.

Having to go bacvk 9000 years for a Proto-Proto-Indo-European makes me wonder if it makes much sense. Aren't we going to find that (most) Eurasian proto-languges originated somewhere in Western Asia at some point in time? If we can speak of origin of languages at all.The 5000 years BP of Semitic makes more sense, is commensurable historically and possibly settles the dispute about the origin of those populations.

Amazing! One of the key arguments for PIE being born in Anatolia is that it borrowed words from Semitic. It is completely impossible for PIE to be 3,000 years older than a language from which it borrowed the word for bull.

Cattle was first domesticated in the Near East, so I don't really see a problem with what you are suggesting. The word for bull may have entered both PIE and Semitic from a common source.

Also, the word for bull is not reconstructed in Hittite AFAIK, so it may not go as far back as the origin of PIE itself.

ms jeanThere is absolutley no difficulity as the word could have been borrowed from pre proto semitic it evolved from(and wich should be connected to egyptian as semitoegyptian) similarly as proto indo-european or any other language did not evolve ex nihilo but developped from an ancestral form.imagine for example the English language it stems from proto germanic but proto germanic did not appear ex nihilo but developped out of proto slavo-germanic.Same for persian from proto iranic from proto indo-iranian from proto armeno-aryan from proto armeno-aryano-greek from proto indo-european from proto indo-hittie from pre proto indo-european from (perhaps) proto indo-afrasano-kartvelianthe presence of the word for bull in semitic or (say iranic) does not exclude that this word does decend from a proto form found in proto semito-egyptian (or proto indo-iranian)

"Amazing! One of the key arguments for PIE being born in Anatolia is that it borrowed words from Semitic. It is completely impossible for PIE to be 3,000 years older than a language from which it borrowed the word for bull.

Cattle was first domesticated in the Near East, so I don't really see a problem with what you are suggesting. The word for bull may have entered both PIE and Semitic from a common source.

Also, the word for bull is not reconstructed in Hittite AFAIK, so it may not go as far back as the origin of PIE itself."

Hittite's word for bull hasn't been deciphered. IE *tauros originally meant 'wild bull' (comp. Lith tauras 'aurochs'. OPruss tauris 'bison'), so the word has nothing to do with cattle domestication.

The Anatolian homeland of IE hasn't been proven and the issue hasn't become clearer after the application of Bayesian methods.

I agree with your principle thoughts, but the notion "proto germanic did not appear ex nihilo but developped out of proto slavo-germanic" is outdated.

Similarities between Germanic and Slavic languages exist because of their very recent proximity (~1,500 years) - the two groups were separated for millennia before. Instead, there was earlier contact with Finno-Ugric languages (proto-Germanic loanwords into them).

In unbiased, computer-generated trees, Germanic always groups with Celtic and Latin (Romance languages)- in fact, with the three of them roughly separating at the same time (from a putative Central European progenitor). Slavic languages, on the other hand, split off earlier, roughly at the same time as proto Indo-Iranian.

"The word for bull may have entered both PIE and Semitic from a common source."

I don't understand why this concept is so difficult to understand, for some people. Words for important technological advancements always float freely through space and time, and are the worst markers for family relations. For example, I guess almost all modern languages must derive from English (because many modern technological terms are borrowed from English).

I view all these horse carriage arguments along the same line (and there we know that technology arose many millennia after PIE).

Other studies I've seen have put Arabic and Hebrew as a clade that are together before when they break of Aramaic, a distinction with important implications for Jewish identity and Arabic nationalism.

This study also omits some of the dead Semitic languages that were present contemporaneously and near in place to Akkadian. For example, it omits the languages of the Eblaites of the 23rd century BCE, the Aramaeans of Chaldea of the 16th to 8th century BCE, the Akhlames (Ahlamu) 14th century BCE, and the language of the Ugarites, 14th to 12th centuries BC. Some of them are attested in writing, so while it would have been inconvenient to get more data on some of these languages, it would not have been impossible.

Further, it doesn't acknowledge the distinctions between different versions of Akkadian which transformed over five recognized evolutionary stages in the period from 2500 BCE to 100 CE (4500 BP to 1900 BP). The date within that 2600 years time span that you assign to the Akkadian word set that you use in your model has a highly material impact on a timeline for a language family estimate of 4,400 to 5,100 years ago(which is itself absurd given that Akkadian itself is attested 4,500 years ago and is known to have originated from a population that migrated to Mesopotamia at that time that had many hundreds of years (if not thousands) to differentiate itself from other Semitic languages spoken in the region at the time that are now existing and from non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages.

These omission makes little difference in classifying and dating the origin of languages in the Ethiosemitic family, for example, but the make an immense difference in reaching inferrences about the age and place of origin of the Semitic languages as a whole. Simply looking at current linguistic diversity one might think that the Semitic languages were Ethiopian in origin, but if one looks at the linguistic diverity of the Semitic languages in the Bronze Age an origin for a proto-Semitic language somewhere in the vicinity of Syria at a considerably older date looks more plausible.

Put another way, at best, this analysis (to the extent that it is accurate) is providing a date for "The Most Recent Common Ancestor" of the living Semitic languages, not for the proto-Semitic language, a distinction that is quite relevant when one is using the date to interpret what happened in pre-history.

mr Andrews, yes it's odd that they did not include languages such as gurage as well as extincy mariotic and eblaic, based on my readings it's old north arabic that forms a sub-group with aramaic and canaanite[hebrew+phoenician+punic],modern arabic; interestingly; is closer to northern ugaritic(both retaining almost all proto semitic sounds+case systems+some lexical isoglosses absent in canaanite),and to lesser extent to akkadianmr dienekesj1 is around 20-40% innorth africa and around 5-10% in eastern africa(we can also add hg T to reach 10-20% southwestasian lineages)if semitic was intorduced from africa we would not have arabians who are up to 100% southwest asian(while on the other hand southwest asian input is homogenous and widespread amongst eastern and northern africans)[also mandaneans of sout iraq lack african input]As for the proto afrasan homeland , militarev(based on pure linguistic datas) and belwood(based on pure aarcheological findings)see levant and natufian culture as the more plausible candidate for proto afrasan homeland.also as you know there are aroun 40% asian input in eastern and northern africa and that 40% crrelates well with afrasan languages' şntroduction into europenowadays ukarine is home of ukrainian but during the past it was the home of proto slavic as welll as secondary homeland of proto indo-european;similarly arabia+southern levant&southwesternern iraq is nowadays exclusively arabic but that does not exclude that during the past it was(like the ukrainian parallel)proto semitic, and before that proto semito-egypto-libyc in the north/proto kushomotchadic in its south and before that proto afrasan as wellThe southwestasian component fits very well with afrasan languages.I grouped all studies and arguments in the thread belowhttp://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=99155here below some quotations

erratumsouthwest asian input in africa correlates well with the introduction of afrasan languages into africaif caucasoid input into africa has to be a linked with a language phylum, afrasan seems the best candidateback to the topic, there are more than 70 semitic languages as a whole so it's odd that this study does not include all of them

1/archeological evidenceshere below some quotations"This language family consists of six branches, five (including Ancient Egyptian) confined to North Africa, one (Semitic) also extending in ancient times to Southwest Asia. That distribution suggests an African origin for the family, whose Semitic branch might then have spread into Southwest Asia. But the overwhelming archaeologically attested flow of domesticated crops and animals from Neolithic times onward, into Egypt and through the Arabian Peninsula into Ethiopia, is out of Southwest Asia rather than out of Africa. That would make it surprising for Semitic languages to have spread against that stream. There are two principal competing hypotheses for the origin of Afro-Asiatic. One, based on reconstruction of early vocabulary for cultural and environmental referents, places the homeland in the Levant during the earliest Neolithic (the late Natufian culture, 9500 B.C.)(32, 70, 71), with a subsequent two-pronged spread by 5000 B.C. that is well documented archaeologically: mixed farming across the Nile into Egypt and North Africa, giving rise to the Egyptian and Berber branches of Afro-Asiatic languages, and sheep- and goat-based pastoralism from western Arabia across the Red Sea into Ethiopia and Sudan, giving rise to the Cushitic, Omotic, and Chadic branches (Semitic spread into Ethiopia much later). That Southwest Asian origin would now be masked by language replacement in the homeland, including the spread of the Semitic branch of Afro-Asiatic languages (including Akkadian or Babylonian, Aramaic, and Arabic) in historic times. The other hypothesis, reflecting Afro-Asiatic language subgrouping but with no clear archaeological support, favors a homeland in northeastern Africa (72, 73). That African origin would imply a preagricultural spread for Afro-Asiatic, perhaps with population movement into a wetter early Holocene Sahara."

2/linguistical evidenceshere below recent(2009)Militarev's paperwww.jolr.ru/files/(9)jlr2009-1(95-106).pdf"Proto-Afrasian Lexicon Confirming West Asian Homeland: PastoralismThe article presents one more step towards the equation of the culture of speakers of Proto-Afrasian, reconstructedon the basis of paleolinguistic data, with the early Neolithic Post-Natufian culture of the Levant. Accordingto the glottochronological method of S. A. Starostin, Proto-Afrasian is dated back to approximately 10 000 —the same period as Post-Natufian (supposed to be the cradle of agriculture and livestock breeding on the planet), asfar as radiocarbon dating tells us. The article offers evidence for the presence of a layer of pastoral lexicon in Proto-Afrasian, in the form of 26 reconstructed names for large and small cattle and various other pastoral terms. Thelexical data are preceded with a brief summary of the current state of affairs in Afrasian historical linguistics, aswell as a description of the author’s methodology of linguistic analysis and his approach to combining linguisticand archaeological data in order to solve the “homeland” issue for proto-languages."

"[...] the absence or paucity of J1 in most African Afroasiatic speakers suggests to me that the J-P58 Proto-Semites may be the result of the transfer of an African language on a basically West Asian population."

I wonder if any among you actually cared to notice, but J1 actually fits with nearly each offshot of the Afroasiatic family as it is found in:-Berber-speaking Guanches (http://www.buildinghistory.org/distantpast/nafricaadna.shtml) and Siwi Berbers to a lesser extent (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DzsWwulA288J:www.ohll.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/pages/documents_Aussois_2005/pdf/Jean-Michel_Dugoujon_et_Gerard_Philippson.ppt+siwa+y+dna&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us).-Cushitic-speaking Bejas and-Copts (formerly speaking Coptic) (http://www.thegeneticatlas.com/study_hassan2008.htm)

So I beg to differ, the only missing branches are Chadic and Omotic... J-M267 actually fits quite well with the Afroasiatic family of languages in general and might've been involved in its genesis, you will thus agree that "paucity" has nothing to do with M267's frequency and distribution amongst African Afroasiatic speakers.IMHO if you subscribe to the general opinion promoting a unique association of Afroasiatic E-M35 and its clades, you're heading for a shock as you'll have to find a specific denominator for R-V88 and consider the diversity of J-M267 in East Africa... A scheme which bizzarely tends to fit with Capsian expansions (probably Afroasiatic).

"Indeed, the recent discovery that haplogroup J1*(xP58) is associated with Northeast Caucasian languages, together with the absence or paucity of J1 in most African Afroasiatic speakers suggests to me that the J-P58 Proto-Semites may be the result of the transfer of an African language on a basically West Asian population." - Dienekes

^^ This is not correct. J-P58 was the marker that spread proto-Semitic, and the fact that it is closely related with Caucasus J1 isn't the result of Afro-Asiatic coming out Ethiopia and replacing Caucasus languages.

Proto-Afro-Asiatic was probably spread by Y-DNA R1b and other markers, whereas proto-Semitic was spread by J-P58.

Also, according to the glottalic theory, Semitic and Kartvelian have similar phonology. And lexical vocabulary is shared by Afro-Asiatic (not Semitic, but really PAA), Elamite, Sumerian and Caucasian languages.

And according to linguistic paleontology (which both you and Polako as well as Azvarohi, for some reason ignore, why?), the proto-Semitic urheimat is in the northern Levant and the flora and fauna vocabulary of proto-Afro-Asiatic locates PAA in the Middl East, not in "Africa".

"Such a scenario might also explain some of the -incorrectly quantified, but nonetheless existent- African genetic components in both Jews and Arabs, as well as the pastoralist/dry-climate J1 associations." - Dienekes

^^ It's more likely that the Jews and Arabs replaced Negroid populations (if there were any there in the first place). In the case of the Arabs, some of their Negroid admixture probably came later with Islamic slavery.

^^ This is not correct. J-P58 was the marker that spread proto-Semitic, and the fact that it is closely related with Caucasus J1 isn't the result of Afro-Asiatic coming out Ethiopia and replacing Caucasus languages.

DO you have trouble reading? I said that J-P58 was associated with Proto-Semites.

Proto-Afro-Asiatic was probably spread by Y-DNA R1b and other markers, whereas proto-Semitic was spread by J-P58.

There is absolutely no reason to think that Afroasiatic has anything to do with haplogroup R1b.

Afroasiatic originated in the southern parts of the Middle East or in the nearby of Africa; it originally had nothing to do with haplogroup J1 (that is more diverse in the northern parts of the Middle East, where its relative also occurs).

Nonetheless, a part of J1 (within J-P58) became Afroasiatic-ized early on in Arabia/southern Levant, becoming the Proto-Semites, and making their appearance in Mesopotamia shortly before the emergence of Akkadian.

And according to linguistic paleontology (which both you and Polako as well as Azvarohi, for some reason ignore, why?), the proto-Semitic urheimat is in the northern Levant and the flora and fauna vocabulary of proto-Afro-Asiatic locates PAA in the Middl East, not in "Africa".

Assyrians are not exactly poster-boys for early Semites. All indications are that the modern Neo-Aramaic speakers (who should not be confused with the historical Assyrians, even though they share the same name) are basically Armenians that are shifted slightly in an Iranian direction (which makes sense as, being heterodox, they flourished among the Sassanians), and slightly in a Semitic direction (the legacy of their small, but non-negligible Semitic ancestry).

DO you have trouble reading? I said that J-P58 was associated with Proto-Semites."

I have no trouble reading. Read my entire sentence and the correlation of J-P58 with proto-Semitic (no disagreements here) and R1b with proto-Afro-Asiatic. That's where you're wrong in assuming that just because J-P58 spread proto-Semitic and that its correlation with Afro-Asiatic in general isn't as good, somehow we can totally assume J-P58 has nothing to do with proto-Afro-Asiatic.

There is absolutely no reason to think that Afroasiatic has anything to do with haplogroup R1b.

There is. R-V88 in Chadic speakers and R1b in Berbers and Assyrians certainly makes R1b a good candidate.

Afroasiatic originated in the southern parts of the Middle East or in the nearby of Africa; it originally had nothing to do with haplogroup J1 (that is more diverse in the northern parts of the Middle East, where its relative also occurs).

You really haven't done your homework on the subject. Explain to me the Cushitic substratum in Southern Arabian; this substratum is lacking in other Semitic dialects and northern Arabian.

Nonetheless, a part of J1 (within J-P58) became Afroasiatic-ized early on in Arabia/southern Levant, becoming the Proto-Semites, and making their appearance in Mesopotamia shortly before the emergence of Akkadian.

The problem with your thesis here is that the variation of J-P58 in south-eastern Turkey, converges with the historically highest variation of Semitic languages in the northern Levant. So J-P58 was never Afro-Asiaticised; it was Afro-Asiatic all along.

Wishful thinking.

It's not wishful thinking. I really suggest you look into linguistic palaeontology and the more interesting studies on proto-Afro-Asiatic:

Here you go, some homework:

http://www.jolr.ru/files/(9)jlr2009-1(95-106).pdf

http://www.phil.muni.cz/jazyk/files/AAmigrationsCORR.pdf

http://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/LipovskyI01.pdf

Assyrians are not exactly poster-boys for early Semites. All indications are that the modern Neo-Aramaic speakers (who should not be confused with the historical Assyrians, even though they share the same name) are basically Armenians that are shifted slightly in an Iranian direction (which makes sense as, being heterodox, they flourished among the Sassanians), and slightly in a Semitic direction (the legacy of their small, but non-negligible Semitic ancestry).

Not only are Assyrians poster boys for the proto-Semites, we are the closest you can get to the proto-Afro-Asiatics. Also, the notion that we're somehow Semiticised Armenians is also incorrect, because it's the other way around: Armenians are Indo-Europeanised Assyrians (or some other Anatolian-Caucasus population, Hurro-Urartian or something like that).

Also, you're completely mistaken in assuming we have no descent from the ancient Assyrians. On McDonald's geographic PCA plot, I was placed exactly in northern Mesopotamia.

You really need to revise your views on not only proto-Afro-Asiatic, but also proto-Indo-European, because there are illogical inconsistencies with the Anatolian hypothesis. Hattic, for one, was spoken there, and the palaeolinguistic vocabulary of proto-Indo-European simply doesn't make sense with Anatolia. So the notion that Assyrians are somehow Semiticised Armenians is simply not correct.

And once you understand why the Pontic-Caspian steppe is the PIE urheimat, you'll also understand that Armenians have very little actual proto-Indo-European ancestry.

Moreover, Armenians are genetically closer to Semites than they are to European IE speakers:

So if you think Assyrians aren't proto-Semites because you think Assyrians are Armenians, you'll also have to explain why Armenians don't group with Europeans (I presume you're of the opinion that Indo-European is a European language family, right?).

That's where you're wrong in assuming that just because J-P58 spread proto-Semitic and that its correlation with Afro-Asiatic in general isn't as good, somehow we can totally assume J-P58 has nothing to do with proto-Afro-Asiatic.

J-P58 has nothing to do with Afroasiatic, both because it's too young for it, and because it's lacking (barring levels that can be explained by Arab, Amharic, Jewish or other Semitic admixture) in African non-Semitic Afroasiatic speakers.

You really haven't done your homework on the subject. Explain to me the Cushitic substratum in Southern Arabian; this substratum is lacking in other Semitic dialects and northern Arabian.

You really don't know how to read. I did not say that Semitic originated in the southern parts of Arabia, but in the southern parts of the Middle East.

It's clear that Semitic did not originate in southern Arabia. Not originating in the southern parts of Arabia is not the same as originating in northern Mesopotamia.

It's not wishful thinking. I really suggest you look into linguistic palaeontology and the more interesting studies on proto-Afro-Asiatic:

What are you talking about?

Militarev's article speaks about a "Natufian/Levantine" origin of Afroasiatic, not a "north Mesopotamian" one. In fact it contains not specific evidence for a geometric center within the broader Middle East.

The "Biblical Theology" article has no journal attribution and no linguistic argument.

The Jazyk paper summarizes the Militarev model and links Afroasiatic to early or pre-Neolithic Levant.

Not to mention that you can't find two linguists to agree on this topic, and the fact that you chose a couple of them says nothing about the state of the field.

The problem with your thesis here is that the variation of J-P58 in south-eastern Turkey, converges with the historically highest variation of Semitic languages in the northern Levant. So J-P58 was never Afro-Asiaticised; it was Afro-Asiatic all along.

This may come as a surprise to you, but Semites are not, nor have they ever been the main population element in Southeastern Turkey.

I'd also like to see the evidence for your claim.

Not only are Assyrians poster boys for the proto-Semites, we are the closest you can get to the proto-Afro-Asiatics. Also, the notion that we're somehow Semiticised Armenians is also incorrect, because it's the other way around: Armenians are Indo-Europeanised Assyrians (or some other Anatolian-Caucasus population, Hurro-Urartian or something like that).

Modern Assyrians are barely distinguishable from their geographical neighbors, all of whom outnumber them greatly in numbers/territory/historical prominence.

Only an extreme case of ethnic nationalism would have us believe that a partially inbred genetic isolate formed by heterodox Christians over the last couple of millennia somehow represents the purest descendants of Afroasiatic speakers.

Your theory also posits a teleological urge to "march South" for the Afroasiatics, who apparently spread south, south, and away from their "north Mesopotamian" homeland but barely made a dent anywhere else.

Actually, the genetic evidence is pretty clear about the recent introduction of Semites and/or their dominant "Southwest Asian" genetic component into northern parts of the Middle East, since that component shrinks to insignificance in Central and South Asia, as well as most of Europe, and was certainly not represented in the flow of populations emanating from that region.

Also, you're completely mistaken in assuming we have no descent from the ancient Assyrians. On McDonald's geographic PCA plot, I was placed exactly in northern Mesopotamia.

Right, and the only people who've ever called northern Mesopotamia their home are the Assyrians...

And once you understand why the Pontic-Caspian steppe is the PIE urheimat, you'll also understand that Armenians have very little actual proto-Indo-European ancestry.

It is not, but the point is irrelevant whether Armenians are largely of PIE or non-PIE ancestry; they are certainly not Indo-Europeanized hypothetical Proto-Afroasiatics of the north; and given how similar Assyrians are to them, Assyrians aren't either.

Assyrians are a north Mesopotamian populations of partial Semitic ancestry that draws them a little away from their non-Semitic neighbors. They are much more remote to almost pure Semites such as Arabians.

So if you think Assyrians aren't proto-Semites because you think Assyrians are Armenians, you'll also have to explain why Armenians don't group with Europeans (I presume you're of the opinion that Indo-European is a European language family, right?).

Why should Armenians group particularly close with Europeans? They group with their geographical neighbors, mainly Kartvelians, and the various Indo-European groups of the northern parts of the Middle East, including the ones Turkicized in recent history.

And, no, Indo-European is not a "European language family", it is a Eurasian language family.

J-P58 has nothing to do with Afroasiatic, both because it's too young for it, and because it's lacking (barring levels that can be explained by Arab, Amharic, Jewish or other Semitic admixture) in African non-Semitic Afroasiatic speakers.

In the case of Afro-Asiatic, it's not a question of J-P58 alone. Afro-Asiatic most likely never had one single haplogroup lineage. Proto-Semitic was spread by J-P58, and Afro-Asiatic was spread by R1b and other haplogroups (both male and female).

You really don't know how to read. I did not say that Semitic originated in the southern parts of Arabia, but in the southern parts of the Middle East. It's clear that Semitic did not originate in southern Arabia. Not originating in the southern parts of Arabia is not the same as originating in northern Mesopotamia.

Then you should be more specific. "southern parts of the Middle East" is something most people would assume you're talking about Arabia, especially when you wrote "nearby of Africa".

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about linguistic palaeontology. Palaeolinguistics is by far more important than linguistic diversity.

Militarev's article speaks about a "Natufian/Levantine" origin of Afroasiatic, not a "north Mesopotamian" one. In fact it contains not specific evidence for a geometric center within the broader Middle East.

Well it's not like the Levant is on the other side of the globe when compared with Mesopotamia, and the northern Levant is very damn close to north Mesopotamia. Militarev's article discusses the flora and fauna of proto-Afro-Asiatic. And that flora and fauna is thoroughly "West Asian" as opposed to Eritrea-Somalia or any nonsense like that.

The "Biblical Theology" article has no journal attribution and no linguistic argument.

It raises valid points though. And these points can be verified by looking them up.

^^ This is exactly why you're so wrong about us Assyrians being Semiticised Caucasians, and this is exactly why we Assyrians are the best preserved descendants of the proto-Afro-Asiatics. J-P58 isn't a Kartvelian marker. It's a proto-Semitic marker and the fact that it has highest variation amongst us Assyrians whereas Kartvelians have J1, is the result of the proto-Afro-Asiatics always having lived close to Caucasian speakers.

Do you understand why you're so wrong about this now Dienekes? Do you understand how our high genetic similarity with Georgians isn't the result of us being Semiticised Kartvelians, but that these two language families and the ancestral populations both language families are derived from, share ancient and common history?

This is also why Arabs simply cannot be proto-Afro-Asiatics nor can they be proto-Semites, because their genetic distance is way too far away from Georgians and Arabia isn't close to the proto-Semitic urheimat (northern Levant), whereas Assyrians have always been living east and northwest of the northern Levant.

Not to mention that you can't find two linguists to agree on this topic, and the fact that you chose a couple of them says nothing about the state of the field.

I don't need agreement. Science isn't a democracy, it's about the quality of the arguments.

This may come as a surprise to you, but Semites are not, nor have they ever been the main population element in Southeastern Turkey.

No surprises here as Semites have always had an important presence in "Turkey". From Mallory (whose books you ought to read and understand, which you don't):

“First, the Indo-European-speaking Anatolians are difficult to distinguish from their non-Indo-European neighbours or predecessors. They appear to have embraced thoroughly the local Anatolian Bronze Age cultures and they display no obvious cultural traits that mark them off as distinctly Indo-European. This is hardly surprising, as the basic social picture of Bronze Age Anatolia is of a series of city-states comprised of linguistically diverse populations sharing the same material culture. It has even been suggested that Hittite itself was not the language of the dominant group but rather a lingua franca, developed out of the close association of the earlier Hittites of Kanes with the Assyrian merchants, who were the first literate population in Anatolia and who used Kanes as a trading house.7”— J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth, ISBN 050005052X, p. 28

I'd also like to see the evidence for your claim.

Evidence for my claim? Well, how about the indisputable fact that our genes are as native to Anatolia as it gets? And mind you, that's not because we're somehow non-Semitic Anatolians; we are very much Semitic, and ancient Anatolians like Hittites and Hattic had very much the same genes as both ancient and modern Assyrians.

Modern Assyrians are barely distinguishable from their geographical neighbors, all of whom outnumber them greatly in numbers/territory/historical prominence.

Do I sense any animosity here Dienekes? The reason why they "outnumber" us, is simply because most of them have our genes. You see, the ancient Assyrians didn't just die out. A lot of them did shift identity/language/culture etc., and those who did became modern "Turks", "Arabs" and such populations. Those Assyrians who kept the Assyrian identity much in large because of the ethnoreligious endogamy that came with being Christians in a Muslim region, kept the Assyrian genes very well preserved.

The reason why we're so difficult to distinguish from Armenians, "Turks" etc., is simply because they're the ones who carry a lot of Assyrian genes. On top of their Assyrian genes, they may and do carry some non-Assyrian genes, which can be seen in Armenians with their slightly higher (but still quite low) northern European component, as you can see on Dodecad K12a. And it's this "north European" component that is the main proto-Indo-European autosomal marker. I know you disagree with me here, but it doesn't matter as your opinion is entirely misguided on the entire PIE question.

Only an extreme case of ethnic nationalism would have us believe that a partially inbred genetic isolate formed by heterodox Christians over the last couple of millennia somehow represents the purest descendants of Afroasiatic speakers.

I'm not the one arguing from a nationalist POV here; you are. Your support of the Anatolian urheimat has everything to do with Anatolia being close to Greece. This is your ideological nationalist bias, and deep inside, you know it just as well as I do. The arguments for an Anatolian farming hypothesis are useless because they're all anti-logical, because it goes against the linguistic palaeontology of proto-Indo-European. You can't have a technological vocabulary for wheel in PIE, and say PIE began diversifying with the Neolithic revolution (the wheel was not invented at the time until thousands of years later!).

On the other hand, proto-Afro-Asiatic in the Fertile Crescent or Anatolia makes a lot of sense, and Assyrians just so happen to be very racially pure (I have every right to take pride in that, and that's not "extreme ethnic nationalism", thank you very much). We have no Mongoloid or Negroid admixture and our ancestors did not mix much at all with Indo-European peoples which is why our "northern European" component is so low.

Your theory also posits a teleological urge to "march South" for the Afroasiatics, who apparently spread south, south, and away from their "north Mesopotamian" homeland but barely made a dent anywhere else.

Yes, so early Afro-Asiatic tribes migrated south, so what? It was cold as hell in Europe at the time, and the climate was okay in the south back then.

Actually, the genetic evidence is pretty clear about the recent introduction of Semites and/or their dominant "Southwest Asian" genetic component into northern parts of the Middle East, since that component shrinks to insignificance in Central and South Asia, as well as most of Europe, and was certainly not represented in the flow of populations emanating from that region.

And by the way, Semitic-like ancestry isn't all that insignificant amongst Greeks, hehe.

Right, and the only people who've ever called northern Mesopotamia their home are the Assyrians...

Pontikos, you don't seem to understand what kind of impermeable group evolutionary strategies we Semites have always had. Sure, there were other tribes in north Mesopotamia. But they didn't last long, and they didn't have an endogamous group evolutionary strategy.

It is not, but the point is irrelevant whether Armenians are largely of PIE or non-PIE ancestry; they are certainly not Indo-Europeanized hypothetical Proto-Afroasiatics of the north; and given how similar Assyrians are to them, Assyrians aren't either.

Let's get this very straight here once and for all: Armenians are Indo-Europeanised, and while they do have some actual PIE ancestry, it's very little and a small part of their genome. If the original proto-Indo-Europeans survived until this day as an endogamous unit and we could use them as a reference population, Armenians would be very clearly distinguishable from them as an ethnic group, kind of like if you compare Armenians and Lithuanians today (something like that anyway).

I could care less whether Armenians have proto-Afro-Asiatic ancestry (they most likely do, but it's not like I lose sleep at night over it). Armenians could also be entirely non-Afro-Asiatic in ancestry and mostly descendants of the Hurro-Urartians or something like that.

What ticked me off with your blog post was your recent ignorance when you suggested that we are Afro-Asiaticised Kartvelians and that the proto-Semites were "Africans", and that proto-Semitic is 3,000 years younger than proto-Indo-European. Your ignorance speaks volumes about how misguided your conclusions are.

First of all, proto-Semitic is older than proto-Kartvelian:

“One intermediary is required by chronology, as [b]Proto-Kartvelian is generally thought to have existed after Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Semitic.[/b]”— Anthony, David W., The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, ISBN: 069114818X, p. 98

Second of all, Assyrians have both J1 and J1c3, whereas Dagestanis have mostly J1, so how can we be Semiticised West Asians? We are the parent population of Kartvelians, and our language family is older than Kartvelian.

It is not, but the point is irrelevant whether Armenians are largely of PIE or non-PIE ancestry; they are certainly not Indo-Europeanized hypothetical Proto-Afroasiatics of the north; and given how similar Assyrians are to them, Assyrians aren't either.

Let's get this very straight here once and for all: Armenians are Indo-Europeanised, and while they do have some actual PIE ancestry, it's very little and a small part of their genome. If the original proto-Indo-Europeans survived until this day as an endogamous unit and we could use them as a reference population, Armenians would be very clearly distinguishable from them as an ethnic group, kind of like if you compare Armenians and Lithuanians today (something like that anyway).

I could care less whether Armenians have proto-Afro-Asiatic ancestry (they most likely do, but it's not like I lose sleep at night over it). Armenians could also be entirely non-Afro-Asiatic in ancestry and mostly descendants of the Hurro-Urartians or something like that.

What ticked me off with your blog post was your recent ignorance when you suggested that we are Afro-Asiaticised Kartvelians and that the proto-Semites were "Africans", and that proto-Semitic is 3,000 years younger than proto-Indo-European. Your ignorance speaks volumes about how misguided your conclusions are.

First of all, proto-Semitic is older than proto-Kartvelian:

“One intermediary is required by chronology, as Proto-Kartvelian is generally thought to have existed after Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Semitic.”— Anthony, David W., The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, ISBN: 069114818X, p. 98

Second of all, Assyrians have both J1 and J1c3, whereas Dagestanis have mostly J1, so how can we be Semiticised West Asians? We are the parent population of Kartvelians, and our language family is older than Kartvelian.

Third, proto-Indo-European is also younger than proto-Semitic! Get this through your head man, it's not funny when you try to be all scientific without realising how inaccurate your conclusions are.

Yet earlier, around 15,000 years ago, Nostratic may have been the antecedent of Indo-European, Altaic (Turkish and Mongolian), Dravidian (southern Indian), Uralic (Finnish and Samoyed), Afro-Asiatic (Berber and Arabic), and Kartvelian (south Caucasian). Reconstructions of Nostratic have been proposed, amounting to several hundred words corresponding to common objects and concepts, such as parts of the body, sun and moon, personal pronouns, animals, and so on. The “lexicon” indicates that the speakers were hunter-gatherers, lacking agriculture but possessing domestic animals such as the dog. Indeed, the oldest domestic dog bones have been dated to that period. Nostratic would later have split into the Afro-Asiatic group of languages, whose speakers, judging by the proposed vocabulary, built fortifications, cultivated, marketed, and used the bow. Proto-Semitic may have arisen 9,000 years ago, and provided many loan words to the Indo-Europeans, another Nostratic off-shoot, which in turn fragmented about 5,000 years ago into Indo-Iranian, Celt, Balt, Slav, Greek, Italic, and Germanic peoples, all of whom migrated to the sites of their present homelands (see e.g. Dolgopolsky, 1995; Ruhlen, 1994).— John L. Bradshaw, Human evolution: a neuropsychological perspective, p. 80, ISBN 0863775055

It's also not clear at all that proto-Indo-European originated in the Neolithic. It may have been the Neolithic revolution that brought PIE in its earliest ancestral form to the Pontic-Caspian steppe, but if so, then PIE stayed there something like five millennia before it began diversifying.

The reason why you just don't understand this is because you think of Greece and how to place PIE near Greece, and you're ignoring linguistic palaeontology. When you ignore linguistic palaentology, that's what happens, because linguistic palaeontology is the most crucial evidence in understanding where and when a language family was spoken.

Damn it Dienekes, I'm so disappointed in you. I shouldn't have to tutor you these basics. You've spent many years on anthro forums, certainly longer than I have, yet here I come only recently after I finished reading Mallory and Anthony (you have read these books, haven't you?) and I tell you what's what.

Assyrians are a north Mesopotamian populations of partial Semitic ancestry that draws them a little away from their non-Semitic neighbors. They are much more remote to almost pure Semites such as Arabians.

Arabs aren't pure Semites, they never have been. I'm telling you, we Assyrians are the real Semites. Even today, we are, not just in the past.

There are multiple reasons why we Assyrians are the real Semites and Arabs aren't. Again, I'll tell you what's what:

1) Assyrians have highest J-P58 variation. This was the marker that spread the Semitic languages, and Arabs have high frequency of it and low variation. So that alone says it's unlikely the Arabs are the proto-Semites.

2) Semitic languages have always had highest variation where Assyrians have traditionally lived in the most northern parts of the Fertile Crescent. In the old days, we spoke Akkadian, Eblaite, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Hebrew and so on, in these regions. Arabic is actually a colonial Semitic language, and it is originally derived from the Levant as well, and that's why Arabs (by "Arabs", I mean ethnic Arabs, such as Saudis and Bedouins) have such a high frequency of the "Southwest Asian" component.

3) Assyrians are racially pure. This makes us all the more the best candidate of the proto-Semites.

4) The proto-Afro-Asiatics weren't a mulatto population like Eritreans/Somalis are.

5) Proto-Afro-Asiatic shares lexical cognates with Sumerian, Elamite and Caucasian. This is linguistic evidence, a fact, and it totally contradicts your nonsense about some "African" tribe shifting the language of "West Asians", not to mention how racist we Middle Easterners are when it comes to Negroid, such a scenario would be impossible. And Assyrians just so happen to be genetically similar to Kartvelians. Is that because we're Semiticised Kartvelians, or is it because proto-Afro-Asiatic was spoken by a population that lived close to Kartvelians and Kartvelians were genetically similar to them?

6) Georgians and other Caucasus folks are a subset of the Middle Eastern genepool (best represented in its most racially pure form today by Assyrians), as can be seen by haplogroup variation.

Because, if Armenians actually had any real significant PIE ancestry, they would group closer with the genepool that spread PIE (east Europeans). But Armenians are genetically closest to Assyrians and Georgians.

They group with their geographical neighbors, mainly Kartvelians, and the various Indo-European groups of the northern parts of the Middle East, including the ones Turkicized in recent history.

Outside of Europe, there's no consistency in Indo-European genetical grouping. Armenians are more genetically similar to Assyrians than they are to Iranians, and Iranians are much more similar to Kartvelians than they are to Indians. That, if anything, is evidence that Indo-European is not a "Eurasian" language family. In Europe, though not perfect, there's at least some consistency in the genetic grouping of Indo-European speakers vis-à-vis Basques.

Armenians also group close with Assyrians. And again, it's not because Assyrians somehow are Armenians who were linguistically Semiticised by some Negro tribe. It's because we Assyrians are the proto-Afro-Asiatics and PAA had close linguistic ties with all the other ancient language families of the Middle East.

And, no, Indo-European is not a "European language family", it is a Eurasian language family.

Wrong again. Indo-European is a thoroughly European language family. Yes, it has been at times spread outside of Europe, such as in India, Iran, Xinjiang, and Armenia. But it evolved in eastern Europe by a group of people high on that "north European" component (that doesn't mean they were Nordic Scandinavians or anything; Swedes carry something like 55% of the proto-Indo-European component).

Highest variation of Indo-European exists in central-eastern Europe, and highest R1a diversity exists in the same region, and that's because proto-Indo-European developed in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, not in Anatolia.

Because, if Armenians actually had any real significant PIE ancestry, they would group closer with the genepool that spread PIE (east Europeans). But Armenians are genetically closest to Assyrians and Georgians.

Even if the Pontic-Caspian steppe theory is correct, the assumption that the Eneolithic inhabitants of the European steppe were like modern day Slavs is unfounded.

We've just had a paper that 5,300-year old North Italians were not like modern-day North Italians, so I see no reason, at present, to suppose population continuity in the European steppe.

Outside of Europe, there's no consistency in Indo-European genetical grouping. Armenians are more genetically similar to Assyrians than they are to Iranians, and Iranians are much more similar to Kartvelians than they are to Indians.

There is no such consistency in Europe either. Russians are closer to Mordvins than they are to most other IE speakers. Iberians are closer to Basques than they are to most other IE speakers.

In the case of the Near East, there are indeed observable patterns: Indo-European speakers (such as Armenians, Kurds, Iranians, and Turks, who are in small part of Altaic origin) have lower North European than the inhabitants of the North Caucasus, and lower Southwest Asian than Semites.

There are multiple reasons why we Assyrians are the real Semites and Arabs aren't. Again, I'll tell you what's what:

1) Assyrians have highest J-P58 variation. This was the marker that spread the Semitic languages, and Arabs have high frequency of it and low variation. So that alone says it's unlikely the Arabs are the proto-Semites.

Your argument is fallacious.

Even if Assyrian J-P58 variation is the highest in the world (and I don't place much faith in Y-STRs), Assyrians are not only descended from J-P58 bearing folk, but from many more people besides.

Arabs, on the other hand, may be descended from a few patrilineages within J-P58 but they are overwhelmingly descended from them, especially in the case of the Arabians. Even if they are "less diverse", they are "purer".

Highest variation of Indo-European exists in central-eastern Europe

You are delusional. Central-Eastern Europe is inhabited by Slavs, a recent twig of the Indo-European tree. The deepest splits of Indo-European, and the greatest dialectal variety are all in the Balkans and Asia, not in Europe.

It is quite amazing how a person who has admitted that he "discovered" his "national identity" only a few years ago due to a book he read by some Finnish writer can express this kind of nonsense as some kind of "authority" about the origins and history of other peoples.

It is not Dienekes who invented the theory that PIE Urheimat is in Eastern Anatolia and Armenian Highland. This well-established and prominent theory is supported by countless scholars from wide disciplines including archaeology, genetics, ethnology, molecular biology, comparative linguistics only to name but a few. Dienekes simply shows the direct connection via the genes with the above evidence from a vast array of disciplines. His finds only come to affirm and complement the above finds that have been conducted by world renowned scholars like Colin Renfrew (pioneered radio carbon dating and the discipline of archaeogenetics), Quentin Atkinson (Oxford University), Russell Gray (Auckland University), Vyacheslav Ivanov (UCLA, honorary member of many academies including the Royal British and Russian Academy of Sciences), Tamaz Gamkrelidze (President of the Georgian Academy of Sciences), Robert Drews (Vanderbilt University), Luigi Lucca Cavalli-Sforza (Stanford University) and many many others. In fact, the above scholars have pointed out that various disciplines show the strongest evidence in favor of Eastern Anatolia and Armenian Highland as the PIE urheimat, the competing theories such as the "Kurgan theory" and others have significant flaws in terms of multi-disciplinary evidence when it comes to archaeology, genetics or comparative linguistics.

I want to thank you Dienekes for all the hard work that you have done over the years and have helped tremendously to better piece together our understanding of important things like various human populations, the origin and spread of the Neolithic Revolution, Indo-European urheimat and so many fascinating aspects that we have comprehended much better thanks to your research in the field of human genetics.

Since Assyrian genetics have been discussed, I feel obliged to share my opinion on the subject.

My observations:

1.The shared paternal lineages observed today between Armenians and Assyrians, such as R-M269 and J1*, converge, perhaps, 2000-4000 years ago. With the caveat, of course, that predictions based on STR markers may lack significant precision.

2.If we exclude Y-DNA T, Assyrians and Caucasian populations, particularly those of Dagestan, may share a close relationship, as far as the Y chromosome is concerned. Assyrians also show Y chromosome affinities to minority populations of the Levant and Mesopotamia, such as the Syrian Alawites (R-M269), Druze (R-M269 and T), “Babylonian” Jews (T), and Marsh Arabs (J1*).

3.The ancestral element(s) captured by the Dodecad K12b "Caucasus" component may represent the principal element of the ancient Levantines and Mesopotamians. At least, in my opinion, as far back as the 1st millennium BCE. I believe this to be a possibility because even in the extreme SW Levant (not far from the Asian/African continental divide), the "Caucasus" component remains significant. Please see below:

Add to that, the following data, from the realm of physical anthropology:

1.Odontological characteristics of the Assyrians / A. K. Palikian.

“The elements of the western subtype of the southern gracile type have been revealed.”

2.Dermatoglyphical characteristics of Assyrian population of Verin Dvin village / K. G. Nalbandyan.

“The set of dermatoglyphic traits were identified, according to which this population does not fall out of the boundaries of the big European race. These traits also demonstrate substantial similarity with peoples of Caucasus.”

And, the following data, based on examination of ancient remains:

1.Morphometric analysis of the dentition from Bronze Age Tell Leilan, Syria, a contribution to the dental anthropology of ancient Mesopotamia (2001)

“Non-metric analysis of the permanent and deciduous dentition of the northern Mesopotamian Bronze Age site of Tell Leilan, when compared with similar analysis conducted world wide and in the Near East, reveals a relatively consistent affiliation with Western Eurasian, or Caucasoid populations, although certain traits share affinities to both Western Eurasian and Sunda-Pacific populations.”

2. The dentition of the first agriculturists (1960, Jarmo, Iraq)

Radiocarbon dating: 6750 BCE +-500 years.

“Certain Arab groups are known to have a marked and most unexpected reduction in the size of the metacone of the maxillary second molars as well as distinctive inter-tooth-group size proportions. These features are not found in the Jarmo teeth. Rather, the Jarmo dentition resembles more the Indo-European type. It also holds a close resemblance to that of the Anatolians (Senyurek, '52).”

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